I am reminded of Margaret's quote as I prepare to join Making A Scene later this week as the Open Space Technology facilitator. In Open Space Technology you are invited to bring your questions, issues, opportunities and ...

Ever tried to change anyone’s behavior at work? It can be extremely frustrating. So often the effort produces an opposite result: rupturing the relationship, diminishing job performance, or causing the person to dig in their heels. Still, some approaches clearly work better than others.

We reviewed a dataset of 2,852 direct reports of 559 leaders. The direct reports rated their managers on 49 behaviors and also assessed the leaders on their effectiveness at leading change – specifically, the managers’ ability to influence others to move in the direction the organization wanted to go. We then analyzed those who had the highest and lowest ratings on their ability to lead change, and compared that with the other behaviors we’d measured.

We found that some behaviors were less helpful in changing others. We found two that had little to no impact, thereby providing useful guidance on what not to do:

David Hain's insight:

One of Newton’s Laws of Thermodynamics was that a body at rest tends to stay at rest. Change needs constant invigoration! ~ Zenger & Folkman

The primary goal of making money for shareholders is at odds with the values of Agile where the primary focus is on delivering value to the customer. In Agile, making money is the result, not the goal. When those two different goals are espoused in different parts or different levels of the organization, there is permanent friction. Unless this issue is resolved, the adoption of Agile at the team level is unlikely to stick.

David Hain's insight:

Moving to the Creative Economy by getting agile - properly! Great piece by Steve Denning!

Systems thinking is the key to solving complex problems and achieving simplicity. Furthermore, by applying systems thinking to different situations, we also start to recognize the existence of universal patterns of behavior in business and in life. In so doing, we develop good judgment, prudence, patience, sense of opportunity, and a whole array of other virtues and strength that are critical to success.

Peter Senge, in his book The Fifth Discipline, provided his own version of the aforementioned universal patterns of behavior. He called them The 11 Laws of Systems Thinking. Below, you will find each law with a brief explanation based on my experience as a consultant, coach, and researcher.

David Hain's insight:

Useful introduction to the principles of systems thinking for complex change

For companies to survive and strive in today’s competitive environment, they will need to change quickly and successfully. Managing change is now a core competence that can no longer be considered a discretionary “nice to have”.

The accelerating pace of change coupled with increasing uncertainty and complexity has pushed up this skills gap to what is now a major area of concern.

David Hain's insight:

Trodden Rick and Gary Hamel on building change-ready organisations for the future

The phenomenon of overburdened employees is hitting organizations harder and faster than expected. In this paper, we explore the stress of these issues on employees in managerial roles and how to measure their “supervisory burden” in an effort to set appropriate spans of control to operate effectively and boost organizational performance.

David Hain's insight:

Change weary, cynical, overburdened - those are the key managers you need to engage in transformation efforts!

Part I of Transformational Currents in the Workplace --- Complexity in Systems, Organizations, and the Workplace by Markku Allison

We have long tried to manage today’s work using tools suited for complicated work, but we fail on a regular basis: industry research tells us at least 30 percent of projects are behind schedule and over budget. The diagram represents Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Framework and does a great job illustrating distinctions between simple, complicated, and complex.

I don't think it's as complicated as this See roles in previous scoop It's then about asking do policies, procedures, practices, processes and systems mean it's simple for people to bring their best to their work and where the answer is no changing it

"The best way to predict the future is to create it," says leadership guru Peter Drucker. The relevance of modern artists is measured to a great degree by their ability to refresh aesthetic concepts and innovate. Many artists who are now seen as cultural leaders created the future through breakthrough work, starting with the 16th century innovator and artist, Leonardo da Vinci, through to Damien Hirst, the most successful artist of our own time.

Innovation is based on thought and imagination, which, together, produce new, different concepts. These usually do not reveal themselves through structured processes and cannot be forced to come into existence. As Drucker has said, "Innovative people go out into the field, look around, ask questions and listen attentively. Analyzing the probability of a business opportunity means right and left-brain activity."

Consider how these examples of avenues of innovation are relevant to artists and business leaders.

David Hain's insight:

Fascinating take on great artists, creativity and innovation. Great pictures too!

The overall percentage of government IT now residing in the cloud may not be all that was hoped for when cloud-first policies were first being announced. However, the number of government cloud implementations is growing rapidly. Judging from the results of these relatively early adopters, the pace of future implementations is very likely to accelerate.

In this report Forbes Insights looks at real success stories at various levels of government in the U.S. Through interviews with over a dozen senior executives from a range of government agencies, consultancies and technology providers, the report examines the efficiencies, advantages and insights these organizations have achieved via cloud deployment.

David Hain's insight:

What the Cloud has done for US Public Administration - case studies. Is there an equivalent for UK?

Is there a way to help organizations move from a Change Transformations mindset to a Continuous Change mind set?

Traditionally, organizations implement large scale change events within their organization by spontaneously have an epiphany and transform every few years.

The frequency of these transformations has rapidly increased from once every 10 years in the 1980s to once every two years in the present.

Today, companies must sustain a continual change pace if they want to succeed in today’s ever-evolving environment. To achieve this, the organizations must prepare to be in a continually changing environment.

This means collaboration at all levels, from executives all the way down to their development teams (or IT teams). Continual change helps make the uncomfortable – comfortable.

David Hain's insight:

Middle Leadership has a major role to play in change. @TheAgilityEdge. Here''s why...

It’s a common assumption that employees naturally resist change, but this great video shows that this assumption may not be completely correct. Of course employees resist change that will make things harder and take them out of their comfort zone.

That’s why it’s important to demonstrate to employees how the change will benefit them. To eliminate resistance you need to highlight the benefits of changing, and the negative aspects of things as they are now, while minimizing the positives of not-changing and the negatives associated with change. As the video reminds us, whether change is good or bad is only a matter of perspective.

David Hain's insight:

How do you frame the change you want to make? It could make all the difference!

When it comes to innovation, the single most common piece of advice may be to “think outside the box.” Constraints, according to this view, are the enemy of creativity because they sap intrinsic motivation and limit possibilities.

Sophisticated innovators, however, have long recognized that constraints spur and guide innovation. Attempting to innovate without boundaries overwhelms people with options and ignores established practices, such as agile programming, that have been shown to enhance innovation. Without guidelines to structure the interactions, members of a complex organization or ecosystem struggle to coordinate their innovative activities.

How, then, can organizations embrace a more disciplined approach to innovation?

David Hain's insight:

Too much constraint can stifle innovation, but maybe too little doesn't help either!

Folks who do systems analysis have a great belief in “leverage points.” These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.

This idea is not unique to systems analysis — it’s embedded in legend. The silver bullet, the trimtab, the miracle cure, the secret passage, the magic password, the single hero who turns the tide of history. The nearly effortless way to cut through or leap over huge obstacles. We not only want to believe that there are leverage points, we want to know where they are and how to get our hands on them. Leverage points are points of power.

David Hain's insight:

Excellent article on Systems Interventions. Long but very worthwhile for people trying to make change happen.

Now that Agile is being blessed by mainstream business journals, the inevitable question becomes: is Agile just another management fad? That is to say, an idea that enjoys intense and widely-shared but short-lived enthusiasm without any basis in its actual qualities. The phenomenon is endemic in management. There’s even an acronym, “BOHICA, or “bend over, here it comes again,” to describe it, with each initiative promising so much and each delivering so little. Is Agile just the latest addition to the list?

You've been successful in launching a new product or a new company. There are customers and clients calling to buy your new product or do business with you. So the next logical step is to scale up your business. Since you have or do something people obviously want, why not?

But before you start scaling your business, it's smart to pause for a moment and take stock. You haven't reached the summit as soon as you've proved your product or service has a good shot in the marketplace. In fact, the journey has just begun.

When you move ahead, you'll want to avoid the pitfalls established companies confront when hastily getting into new markets plus the errors that drive so many startups to oblivion. On the other hand, waiting too long to scale up your business can dictate the life or death of your company, too.

Here are the three things you need to avoid when you want to grow your business.

David Hain's insight:

Review, review, review. One, two and three on the list for leading change!

Able working 101While agile working provides a valuable tool set for managing and improving performance, agility requires the adoption of an agile mindset to help establish an agile culture as well as an agile way of working. This requires the adoption of a way of thinking as well as working that helps us to accept and embrace change as part of the process, and to adopt an approach of continuous learning, growth and improvement.

THE NEED FOR DECISIVENESS AND COMMUNICATION, THE INEVITABLE DISRUPTION, AND WHY YOU’LL PROBABLY NEED TO BREAK DOWN “THE OLD WAYS”... MANAGERS CAN LEARN A LOT FROM THESE CLASSIC CHANGE MANAGEMENT CASE STUDIES.Change can be the foundation of competitive advantage but, to be effective, a change management programme must identify areas of potential conflict, address the needs of everyone in the organisation and, crucially, bridge the gap between the aspirations of executives, technical project teams and the people affected by the change.

Few organisations do this well. But there are exceptions, such as these outstanding case studies of change.

Although the benefits of slimming down are well-documented, especially in times of economic uncertainty, many of the largest firms in the world have struggled in their attempts to streamline while maintaining their competitive advantage. The authors of this paper recommend several management moves that firms can make to reduce the wasteful aspects of their operations and still deliver full value to their customers.

The human body serves as the perfect metaphor for understanding the innovation challenge facing today's organizations. The body is built to adapt and respond to demands that are placed upon it. The greater the demand, the stronger the response. If you and your organization are going to thrive in this world you must build and keep your innovation muscles strong. We know that only the fittest survive.Unfortunately, too many organizations suffer from overweight bureaucracies, which crush employee enthusiasm and creativity. Rather than seizing on high potential opportunities and championing a bright future, they procrastinate and deny market realities. These out-of-shape organizations find themselves falling behind on a quarterly basis because they are unable to think differently, decide quickly, and collaborate effectively. They are simply not fit enough to successfully compete and win in today’s fast paced global economy.

David Hain's insight:

Innovation fitness - nice concept with a 101 by an experienced 'personal trainer'.

With the pace of change in the world accelerating around us, it can be hard to remember that the digital revolution is still in its early days. Massive changes have come about since the packet-switch network and the microprocessor were invented, nearly 50 years ago. A look at the rising rate of discovery in fundamental R&D and in practical engineering leaves little doubt that more upheaval is on the way.

For incumbent companies, the stakes continue to rise. From 1965 to 2012, the “topple rate,” at which they lose their leadership positions, increased by almost 40 percent1 as digital technology ramped up competition, disrupted industries, and forced businesses to clarify their strategies, develop new capabilities, and transform their cultures. Yet the opportunity is also plain. McKinsey research shows that companies have lofty ambitions: they expect digital initiatives to deliver annual growth and cost efficiencies of 5 to 10 percent or more in the next three to five years.

To gain a more precise understanding of the digitization challenge facing business today, McKinsey has been conducting an in-depth diagnostic survey of 150 companies around the world. By evaluating 18 practices related to digital strategy, capabilities, and culture, we have developed a single, simple metric for the digital maturity of a company—what might be called its Digital Quotient, or DQ. This survey reveals a wide range of digital performance in today’s big corporations (exhibit).

David Hain's insight:

How important is the digital quotient to the future? Very, says McKinsey!

A123 Systems may have different owners now, but the name, the brand, and technology are largely the same in 2015 as they were in 2009. And I’m guessing that to the extent most people know about the company, they still identify it with its high-profile short-term failure, rather than with its quieter long-term success.

Peter Senge's keynote speech "Systems Thinking for a Better World" at the 30th Anniversary Seminar of the Systems Analysis Laboratory "Being Better in the World of Systems" at Aalto University, 20 November 2014.

David Hain's insight:

Peter Senge - required reading if you want to make change sustainable! Here's a 101 that you can start with!

Imagine you asked two teams to tackle the same challenge, and the groups came back to you with entirely different proposals. Would you instinctively green-light the one that seemed more promising? Or would you allow both teams to play out their approaches for some time (maybe even years) before deciding how to proceed?

Successful leaders of innovation would make the second choice, according to Linda A. Hill, the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration and faculty chair of the Leadership Initiative at Harvard Business School. She says that what matters most for achieving breakthroughs is giving people the chance to debate, experiment, fail, and try again. It’s up to the person in charge to encourage these behaviors, which in turn unleashes people’s creativity.

How can you create a culture of innovation to drive long-term growth? Representatives from leading business schools Henley, Warwick, Cass and INSEAD discuss the value of innovation and the skills you need to develop

Folks who do systems analysis have a great belief in “leverage points.” These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.

This idea is not unique to systems analysis — it’s embedded in legend. The silver bullet, the trimtab, the miracle cure, the secret passage, the magic password, the single hero who turns the tide of history. The nearly effortless way to cut through or leap over huge obstacles. We not only want to believe that there are leverage points, we want to know where they are and how to get our hands on them. Leverage points are points of power.

David Hain's insight:

Excellent article on Systems Interventions. Long but very worthwhile for people trying to make change happen.

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